The Truth About De Campo (10 page)

He was going to help her, wasn’t he? Help her drag Le Belle Bleu out of the mess it was in before her hotel chain’s reputation went into the toilet? This was no time to pine for him to acknowledge how amazing their night together had been.

Her grip around her wineglass tightened.
Oh, my God
. That’s exactly what she’d wanted him to do. She’d been expecting him to rehash last night, when all he’d wanted to do was help her relaunch her hotel, and, in doing so, ingratiate himself even more to Davis Investments.

Where in all this had she become
that
creature?

And if a man was crazy to walk away from her, then how had he just done it so easily?

Quinn, the queen of business, the queen of logic, suddenly had to swallow a very bitter pill. Last night might have been explosive. A once-in-a-lifetime chemistry. But she wasn’t worth a ten-million-dollar deal.

It was that simple.

She stood up with a squeal of her chair that made the couple at the next table stare. It’s not as if she should be surprised. When it came to Quinn Davis, there was always a reason to leave.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HINGS
ALWAYS
GOT
worse before they got better.

Wasn’t that the saying?

Matteo sat at the lobby bar of Le Belle Bleu knocking back a local beer as the last of the contractors beat a hasty retreat before Quinn could catch them and ask for just
one
more thing to be done. They were wary of her perfectionism, working like dogs to get the last cosmetic fixes done to the restaurant and bar before the hotel was unveiled to everyone who mattered in five days. But at some point they had to sleep. Not that Quinn seemed to have noticed. Or needed to herself...

When the scale of the work to be done had become clear, he’d offered to stay and help manage the contractors. Quinn couldn’t do it all on her own and his familiarity with the contractors went a long way. He had to be back in New York right after the reopening for a board meeting and then in Chicago for the pitch, but at least he could help her get the doors open. Make the hotel shine for its debut.

He’d worked side by side, day and night with her and François to get the menus fixed and the human machinery of the bar and restaurant functioning as a five-star hotel should. Now it was just a question of execution. Could the chefs perfect the dishes? Could the bartenders master the complex cocktail list they’d created? Could the staff come together like the well-oiled machine they needed to be to impress a crowd that would be discerning to a fault?

He reached up and massaged the back of his neck. He was beat. Exhausted. But it was worth it. Daniel Williams had boarded a flight back to the outback looking utterly disgruntled at leaving the competition behind. Quinn was relying more on Matteo every day. It was exactly where he wanted to be. But funnily enough, this hadn’t been all about his endgame. Quinn was struggling. She’d taken on a task no human being could do by themselves and refused to admit she was in over her head. She’d plowed ahead against the odds with a mind so patently brilliant he could see why she’d gotten where she had at such a young age.

They might, just might, pull this off.

His mouth quirked. Her management style could use an overhaul. Her passion for what she did meant she came on a bit strong. But everyone, right down to the busboys and bartenders, respected her work ethic. Even Raymond Bernard, presently making his way across the lobby with Quinn, seemed to be catching the fever. He might even keep his job at this rate.

The pair pulled to a halt in front of him. Matteo studied the dark circles under Quinn’s eyes. She needed help. More than he could give her. She looked longingly at his beer. “Our sommelier’s flight was canceled. He’ll be here first thing in the morning instead.”

“So we come back then?”

“We have a big storm rolling in.” Raymond gestured toward the darkening sky. “I don’t advise you driving back to Paradis under those conditions, not on these roads.”

Quinn gave the sky an uncertain look. “It won’t be that bad, do you think?”

The manager lifted his shoulders. “It’s going to be a proper tropical storm. I wouldn’t chance it.”

Her brow furrowed. “Are they finished with the floors on any of the suites?”

“The Dolphin Suite, yes. I had them finish it in case you wanted to stay.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded. “Everything else is still being polished. That one has three bedrooms in it though.”

Quinn caught her lip between her teeth. Matteo could have saved them all the breath and suggested that, no, staying here in a suite with Quinn with the electricity that raged between them was a distinctly
bad
idea. However, even he, a lover of windy roads and tricky driving, didn’t relish the thought of traversing the narrow, hair-raising St. Lucian highways in a tropical downpour.

Quinn glanced at him. “Okay if we stay?”

“Of course.” He could make it through one night with a single wall between them. Couldn’t he? He’d managed to get through an entire week without putting his hands on her. Had kept things straight as a board between them.
This
was definitely doable.

“All right then, thank you,” Quinn accepted. “We’ll stay.”

They raided the hotel boutique for a change of clothes while Raymond got them a key. Quinn held up a tangerine-colored bikini. “I need a swim,” she said with a grimace. “Get yourself some trunks.”

He stared at the curtain of the changing room as it flapped shut behind her. Was she crazy? What planet was she on? Sharing a hotel suite was bad enough. Getting naked with her was insanity.

Not happening.

Except he was severely hot and tired. He
needed
to unwind from the pressure cooker that was Quinn, and a beer in the plunge pool or hot tub was an irresistible siren’s call. Mouth tightening, he grabbed a pair of trunks, an extra shirt and a pair of khakis. He could swim while she was working. God knew she did it 24/7.

* * *

Showered and changed into casual pants and a polo shirt, Matteo emerged from his bedroom into the main living area of the luxury oceanfront suite destined to house heads of state and rock stars, to find Quinn pacing the space, phone pressed to her ear, her gait agitated, voice sharp.

Not something he needed to be present for, he decided, walking out onto the terrace. He took in the forbiddingly dark sky, its ominous gray-black clouds that seemed to hang suspended over the island. Raymond had been right. It was going to be a proper tropical storm, hard and heavy, any minute now. There was nothing like an island rainstorm to relieve the tension and humidity in the air, and right now they both needed it. Badly.

He fought the urge to strip down and dive into the ocean and stay there. No swimming allowed until Quinn, in that sapphire-blue dress of hers, which made the most of her voluptuous figure, was safely immersed in work and the sweats he now knew she preferred to do it in.

Focus. Get the job done, Matteo
.

Quinn’s voice floated out onto the terrace, hard, determined. “No, Warren, I do not need you to fly down here. It’s coming together.”

A pause. “You don’t trust me.”

Another pause. “I’m
fine
. Focus on the U.S. hotels. The reopening will go off without a hitch, I promise you.”

If
everything fell into place. He winced as he thought about how much there was still left to do in five short days.

The rest of the conversation was short, abrupt. The ping-pong back-and-forth of two intensely driven, strong wills ended in a defiant silence. It was a good five minutes before Quinn joined him on the terrace, her green eyes glimmering with frustration, full mouth drooping with fatigue.

“Where is the wine?”

He poured her a glass of the sparkling white chilling in the ice bucket. “When,” he asked quietly, handing it to her, “are you going to admit you’re human like the rest of us?”

The tigerlike fierceness he’d come to know so well sparked in her eyes. “It’s not that,” she growled, taking the glass from him. “He never fully trusts me with anything. He says he does, then he undercuts me. He has to put his stamp on everything. Point out where I’m lacking...”

Matteo shrugged. “It sounded to me like he was offering help.”

Her mouth twisted. “He only offers it when he thinks you’re about to screw up.”

“Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” he suggested. “The most successful people in the world don’t do it on their own. They surround themselves with good people.”

She lifted her chin as if she hadn’t even heard him. “Once, just once, I’d like to do it on my own. Prove that I am not successful just because I am Warren’s daughter, but because of my damned impressive abilities.”

“I don’t think anyone’s doubting that.”

“Yes, they do.
All the time the other vice presidents take shots at me. I’ve heard them behind my back.”

He took a sip of his wine. “So you’re going to spend the rest of your career worrying about what everyone else thinks?”

She pointed her glass at him, antagonism darkening her eyes. “Do you know that after I made the top thirty under thirty list, Warren did not say a word of congratulations to me? Not a word. He
said,
and I quote
, ‘
It’s too bad you weren’t the first woman on it.’”

Matteo blinked. “Perhaps it’s not his thing to give compliments then, but I’m sure he was proud of you. He had to have been. That list is brutally hard to get on to.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Quinn came back bitterly. “Warren’s standards are so high you
can’t
be human. You have to be a machine.”

“How’s that going for you?” he asked softly. “You seem to be doing a pretty good impersonation of one and it’s still not making you or him happy.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I just need to do better.”

“No, you don’t.”
He took a step closer. “Dammit, Quinn, you need to believe in yourself. You are working miracles here but you need help.”

“I just need to get through the next few weeks and I’ll be fine.”

He sighed. “There are too many issues with too many properties.”

“I will manage.”

“You will self-destruct.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “I didn’t ask for your commentary.”

He hissed in a breath
.
She could be a cold bitch sometimes. He’d been busting his butt for a week trying to help her and this was what he got? But even as he thought it, he knew better. Knew the puzzle that was Quinn had grown a hard shell to protect herself from getting hurt.

Let it go, Matteo
. The voice of sanity echoed in his head.
Drop it now before you get more emotionally involved with a woman who is mortally off-limits to you.

They ate at the candlelit table for two that overlooked the ocean, protected by a canopy as a crackling thunderstorm descended. It lit up the night with outrageously beautiful white light that arced across the sky and stole their breath. The small talk made him crazy. The need to hold her made his hands curl at his sides. He gritted his teeth and went through the key points to review with the sommelier in the morning. Forced the salmon down his throat. Did not acknowledge how she bit her lip against the electricity that raged between them every time their gazes collided, just as strong as the storm around them.

One more taste of her, he knew, and he was a dead man.

Matteo did not do relationships with women. Didn’t even know if he was capable of one with his checkered past. With his parents’ business merger as his prime example of what one could encompass. Quinn needed someone she could believe in. Someone who could restore her faith in men. Not him.

She offered him a liqueur after dinner. Coffee. He turned them both down flat. Watched the disappointment slacken her lower lip. “I have work to do,” he murmured, getting to his feet and throwing his napkin on the table. “Thank you for dinner.”

Then he escaped to his room.

* * *

Quinn poured herself another glass of wine and paced. She was out of control with her stress, no doubt about it. Matteo did not deserve her ire, not when he’d just spent the entire week bailing her behind out of an impossible situation they might
actually
pull off if they were very, very lucky.

It’s just that he was so damn perfect sometimes. So calm and in control and able to see the big picture. Her fingers curled around her wineglass, absorbing its icy chill. That was, when he wasn’t falling apart over a death he wouldn’t talk about....

She stopped in front of the incomparable view of the sparkling sea that stretched for miles in front of her. And admitted it. Wasn’t the real problem what a good job he was doing ignoring her?

She wanted to kill him.
How rational was that?

Quinn stalked inside and changed into the bikini she’d raided from the boutique. Who cared if the sides were cut so high you could see her butt? Or if the triangles of fabric on the top didn’t do a great a job of covering her chest? Matteo had damn well walked away from her again. Without a backward glance. Which was absolutely their deal. It was. She just didn’t know how he could so completely turn off his feelings. Forget how unbelievable that night they’d shared had been. Because she’d tried. She’d really tried. And it wasn’t working.

She went back outside and sat on the edge of the plunge pool. The storm had moved off, silvery moonlight slanting across the smooth surface of the water, reflecting her confusion back at her. One night was supposed to have been all it was, yet she felt changed somehow. Matteo’s hands on her skin, his passion for her, had replaced the fear and inadequacy Julian had implanted in her with the alternate reality that she was beautiful and desirable. Worthy of being treasured.

It had shattered a perception of herself carved over a roller-coaster year of marriage. She wasn’t home enough, Julian had said. She wasn’t warm enough to the wives of his business associates. Which had degenerated into the fact she wasn’t warm enough in general. She didn’t treat him like the
man
of the house.

She downed another gulp of the wine with a jerky movement. Her inexperience in bed had been a major disappointment to Julian. But now that that night with Matteo had proven she wasn’t a cold fish, now that she’d sampled her ability to feel, to
want,
she was struck by the disturbing thought that she would never experience it again. That no man would ever know her as instinctively as Matteo did. Had from day one.

She sank her toes into the water. Lifted them out and watched the droplets fall like big fat tears from her skin. Hot moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want to be that person anymore. The woman who had written off a part of herself as unrecoverable. Who had never believed herself capable of more. A lump formed in her throat, swift and hard. Julian had taken away her desire to feel. Matteo had given it back to her. But he was just a playboy doing his thing. He would move on now, win this deal. Focus on what was important to him. And Quinn would be left with the empty shell of who she’d always been.